Homeland Security

September 21 2015 by admin in Uncategorized |Comments Off on iPhone Apps Hacked

Many of Apple Inc.’s App Store apps were found to be infected with malicious malware. A compromised version of Apple’s developer tool kit was used by unsuspecting programmers. It is being described as “a first-of-its-kind security breach, exposing a rare vulnerability in Apple’s mobile platform.”

Compromised iPhone and iPad apps include mobile chat app WeChat, taxi app Didi Kuaidi, and a music app from NetEase. The malware can transmit information, phish for usernames and passwords, as well as, read and write information on the user’s clipboard.

“To protect our customers, we’ve removed the apps from the App Store that we know have been created with this counterfeit software and we are working with the developers to make sure they’re using the proper version of Xcode to rebuild their apps,” Apple said.

“We believe XcodeGhost is a very harmful and dangerous malware that has bypassed Apple’s code review and made unprecedented attacks on the iOS ecosystem,” said Palo Alto Networks security researcher Claud Xiao.